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SYSK Selects: Your limb is torn off - now what? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's
0:03
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selex, I've chosen so your limbs
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Speaker 1: torn off. Now what. It's a great classic episode filled
0:10
Speaker 1: with neat stories about things like exposed innards and sewing
0:14
Speaker 1: muscles together. It's a good one and it has a
0:17
Speaker 1: really great intro, if I do say so myself. It's
0:20
Speaker 1: from January, so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
0:28
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:36
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:39
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant and this is stuff you should
0:41
Speaker 1: know because Jerry's over there, King, are you doing buddy?
0:45
Speaker 1: Besides sick, I'm not sick. I'm just I've got a
0:49
Speaker 1: little bit of a bug. But well do you think
0:52
Speaker 1: that's the first step? And yeah, and being sick is
0:56
Speaker 1: saying I'm sick. I definitely believe in psycho somad effects.
1:01
Speaker 1: You know, the mine has an impact on the body. Well,
1:03
Speaker 1: if you can be a hypochondria, actually you can do
1:05
Speaker 1: the opposite, right, yeah, yeah, you can will yourself into
1:09
Speaker 1: not being Anyway, people, the show must go on, And
1:12
Speaker 1: I just want to point out how dedicated my partner.
1:14
Speaker 1: Here's to his craft. Well, I also want to say,
1:16
Speaker 1: I want to promise that it's not going to be
1:18
Speaker 1: like the great six weeks of No. You don't get
1:22
Speaker 1: that was back in the old days, the unhealthy days.
1:25
Speaker 1: I smoked and everything. Yeah, your body didn't know how
1:27
Speaker 1: to heal, so it was enjoying nicotine. Now I'm just
1:30
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm not getting sick. I said it to
1:32
Speaker 1: myself last night, and here I am better than you
1:35
Speaker 1: ever Josh two point oh, thank you. All right, let's
1:38
Speaker 1: do this, Okay, are you ready? Yeah, I got a
1:41
Speaker 1: story for you. I bet I know it. I'll bet
1:43
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. You saw. His name is Everett Knowles Jr.
1:49
Speaker 1: But everybody called him Eddie two days in a why
1:53
Speaker 1: I find the unwholesome. Yeah, and I didn't know Eddie
1:56
Speaker 1: could be short forever never heard that. I don't think
1:58
Speaker 1: it is. I think he just didn't like his name, Okay,
2:01
Speaker 1: because it seems like you should call him every yeah
2:04
Speaker 1: or heavy ev yea of the big ee something. So
2:11
Speaker 1: he was a little either. He's a little guy, tiny
2:14
Speaker 1: like a little Elvis. Uh. Well, Eddie, we'll call him
2:18
Speaker 1: Eddie because that's what he preferred to be called sure.
2:20
Speaker 1: He was walking home from school one day in Somerville, Massachusetts,
2:25
Speaker 1: which is a suburb of Boston, and he was walking
2:28
Speaker 1: along the railroad tracks and there just happened to be
2:31
Speaker 1: a train loaded with gravel hauling out of the area
2:37
Speaker 1: very slowly while he was walking alongside, and said, you
2:40
Speaker 1: know what, I'm just gonna have a little thrill right
2:42
Speaker 1: now and grab onto this train. And he did. He
2:46
Speaker 1: successfully grabbed onto the train, was hanging with I believe
2:50
Speaker 1: his right arm. Yeah, and uh was having the time
2:54
Speaker 1: of his life just dangling there when he misjudged the
2:58
Speaker 1: distance between the train side the train and the side
3:01
Speaker 1: of a tunnel and he was pulled into the tunnel support,
3:07
Speaker 1: smacked it and hung on for a second before he
3:11
Speaker 1: was dropped off of the train. The train kept going
3:13
Speaker 1: through the tunnel, leaving Eddie kind of crumpled and in
3:17
Speaker 1: a little shivering mass at the mouth of the tunnel.
3:23
Speaker 1: So he stands up and he grabs his arm. He's like, oh,
3:26
Speaker 1: my arm doesn't feel very good, and he starts walking
3:29
Speaker 1: toward town and apparently he walked about a hundred yards
3:32
Speaker 1: uphill when some workers saw him and said, grab that kid.
3:37
Speaker 1: Because he was covered in blood, he was staggering, he
3:40
Speaker 1: looked like he was out of He's clearly in shocks.
3:42
Speaker 1: They grabbed it, ran and got a woman, because at
3:45
Speaker 1: the time, this is n two, a woman was the
3:47
Speaker 1: only one who could provide any kind of initial emergency care.
3:51
Speaker 1: Um and a clerk at I believe some sort of
3:55
Speaker 1: warehouse um came out and started to apply pressure to
3:59
Speaker 1: this boy's wound. But she had a little bit of trouble.
4:03
Speaker 1: When she tried to close the wound with a tournique,
4:06
Speaker 1: she found that his arm was an attached to his
4:11
Speaker 1: body any longer. He's just kind of holding it there.
4:14
Speaker 1: Very Luckily he was wearing a jacket, or else his
4:16
Speaker 1: arm would have been back at the mouth of the tunnel. Man.
4:18
Speaker 1: Can you imagine, like the guy is holding his arm
4:22
Speaker 1: basically to keep it from falling out of his jacket,
4:25
Speaker 1: although he didn't know that, you know, no, he didn't.
4:27
Speaker 1: He was in shock. Luckily, he was still lucid enough
4:30
Speaker 1: to like tell everybody who he was, where he lived,
4:33
Speaker 1: and uh. They called the the hospital, and the hospital
4:38
Speaker 1: scrambled some surgeons. But it wasn't until chuck Um he
4:41
Speaker 1: got to the hospital and they started cutting his jacket
4:44
Speaker 1: off that they realized the extent of the damage. This
4:47
Speaker 1: kid's arm was torn clean off. But the operative word
4:52
Speaker 1: is clean. Yeah, he's right, because Eddie Everett Knowls Jr.
4:58
Speaker 1: Of Somerville, Mass On what May nineteen sixty two, became
5:03
Speaker 1: the first recipient of a full successful limb reattachments, first
5:08
Speaker 1: human recipient. Right. Yeah, it's a good point. They had
5:11
Speaker 1: done that before dogs successfully, and they had they had
5:15
Speaker 1: done all the different surgeries that are required to reattach
5:19
Speaker 1: a limb, but they had never done all of them
5:21
Speaker 1: at once. Like they'd reattach the nerves, they'd reattach bone,
5:25
Speaker 1: they'd reattached blood vessels, but they had never had a
5:28
Speaker 1: full amputation and a human being successfully reattached. And um.
5:33
Speaker 1: From what I read, the doctor was I don't know
5:36
Speaker 1: about excited, but they had been looking for a case
5:39
Speaker 1: because they thought, like, I think we can do this.
5:41
Speaker 1: We just need the right case, right exactly, you know.
5:44
Speaker 1: And he called his buddy and he's like, I think
5:45
Speaker 1: we got one. Get in there. They got the They
5:48
Speaker 1: like you said, they'd successfully reattached artery's nerves, bone, that
5:51
Speaker 1: kind of thing, but never all never the whole shebang.
5:54
Speaker 1: So they said, well, we know how to do this. Yeah,
5:56
Speaker 1: if somebody will just come along and present us with
5:59
Speaker 1: an arm pulled leanly off, especially a twelve year old,
6:02
Speaker 1: because that definitely worked at his advantage. Apparently an artery
6:06
Speaker 1: when severed will plug itself up, especially in younger kids.
6:11
Speaker 1: That plugging is way more successful and happens more quickly.
6:14
Speaker 1: So this kid just basically presented like the perfect case.
6:17
Speaker 1: The main artery I guess it is brachial artery leading
6:20
Speaker 1: out of his shoulder was a full like two inches
6:22
Speaker 1: out of the wounds. So like they had a lot
6:25
Speaker 1: to work with and work they did. Uh yeah, and
6:28
Speaker 1: they the arm was on ice and they began working immediately.
6:33
Speaker 1: This is mass general by the way, and um, they
6:36
Speaker 1: started with the arteries and veins, and then the nurse felt, well,
6:43
Speaker 1: they all sort of saw color and they described as
6:45
Speaker 1: a glow kind of came back into the arm. This
6:48
Speaker 1: kid hopped the train, had his arm pulled off, and
6:49
Speaker 1: within two and a half hours they had gotten circulation back. Yeah,
6:53
Speaker 1: and the nurse scrabbed the hand and said, hey, it's warm.
6:56
Speaker 1: That's good, spink and warm. She shook it, made it
6:59
Speaker 1: do the metal sign everybody in the operating theory is laughing.
7:04
Speaker 1: The bone and the muscle and the nerve and the
7:06
Speaker 1: skin um happened in in later surgeries, and the I
7:11
Speaker 1: think the nerve. They made a pretty important decision at
7:13
Speaker 1: the time was to wait on that altogether, uh, and
7:17
Speaker 1: let it heal some more first, which is as it
7:19
Speaker 1: turns out. Actually, as it turns out, most of this
7:23
Speaker 1: was sort of how they do it today. Like they
7:25
Speaker 1: perfected the process from that point through the seventies and
7:30
Speaker 1: in the eighties is when they really started like humming
7:32
Speaker 1: with limb reattachment. The only difference that I saw was
7:36
Speaker 1: and we'll get into it a little more, but um.
7:39
Speaker 1: They reattached the arteries first to get circulation, I guess
7:42
Speaker 1: to keep from more and more tissue dying. Um. And
7:45
Speaker 1: then they reattached the bone by driving a screw and
7:48
Speaker 1: using a hammer they nail the screw into the marrow.
7:52
Speaker 1: And then reattached the arm bone. That what is that femur?
7:57
Speaker 1: No femurs in the leg the leg You think I
7:59
Speaker 1: would looked this up already, Yeah, the upper arm bone.
8:04
Speaker 1: Then they drove that into the other end of the
8:07
Speaker 1: crew normally now though they do they reattach the bone
8:11
Speaker 1: for supervide stability, so when you reattach the arteries and
8:15
Speaker 1: veins and stuff, they won't pull away. Yeah, and he
8:18
Speaker 1: uh it was a success story because he ended up
8:21
Speaker 1: he was uh he couldn't use that hand as his
8:24
Speaker 1: dominant hand any longer, which just said because he was
8:26
Speaker 1: a good picture. Yeah, but he um was able to
8:29
Speaker 1: eventually get enough use out of it to where, uh
8:32
Speaker 1: they said about like a left hander would have use
8:35
Speaker 1: of his right hand. So he just sort of had
8:38
Speaker 1: to switch that up. But for nineteen sixty two, that's
8:41
Speaker 1: pretty successful, especially considering in nineteen sixty was the very
8:47
Speaker 1: first microsurgery performed just two years previously at the University
8:53
Speaker 1: of Vermont. Oh yeah, go catamounts. But um, that's dedication
8:59
Speaker 1: so microso surgery, that's really what we're talking about here.
9:02
Speaker 1: It's the use of a microscope to perform surgery. And
9:05
Speaker 1: when you're attaching, you're essentially sewing together little nerves and
9:10
Speaker 1: blood vessels like a millimeter in diameter. You need a
9:14
Speaker 1: microscope and a tiny, tiny little needle, right, and you're
9:17
Speaker 1: using tiny, tiny little sutra thread which is about is
9:21
Speaker 1: is as big as a hair. That's the stuff you're
9:25
Speaker 1: using to to suture these blood vessels back together. It's
9:28
Speaker 1: not catgut, no, And it's an extremely involved um surgery
9:33
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, but it's step by step. It's
9:35
Speaker 1: like first you do the blood vessels, then you do
9:38
Speaker 1: the arteries, UM, and you do muscles, ligaments, tendons, all
9:43
Speaker 1: this stuff, and you're doing it in this this process.
9:47
Speaker 1: But each each surgery, each part of the procedure is
9:51
Speaker 1: like an enormous surgery in and of itself. So like UM,
9:55
Speaker 1: a limb reattachment which is called um replantation. I thought
9:59
Speaker 1: it was be called like limbery or something. Some people
10:03
Speaker 1: call it that. I'm a limberist. The saucier doctors call
10:06
Speaker 1: it limbery, but UM, it usually is like as on
10:09
Speaker 1: a whole. The replantation surgery can last like an entire day. Yeah,
10:14
Speaker 1: it's it's intensive, UM And I read too that it
10:17
Speaker 1: uh the whole micro surgery. The concept of using a
10:20
Speaker 1: microscope for surgery was not accepted at first, Like doctors
10:24
Speaker 1: and surgeons were like, no, like you, we can't do that.
10:27
Speaker 1: We have to look with our eyes, and so it
10:30
Speaker 1: had to be perfected sort of on the fringe by
10:33
Speaker 1: doctor by surgeons who are willing to like accept this
10:36
Speaker 1: might be the future an experiment in their basements. I guess,
10:39
Speaker 1: so on hapless victim maybe or dogs. Yeah, I didn't
10:43
Speaker 1: get the and I didn't look it up, but I
10:45
Speaker 1: didn't get the impression from this article one way or
10:49
Speaker 1: the other how dogs lost their limbs to begin with, Like,
10:53
Speaker 1: was it accidental and they're like, okay, well this we'll
10:56
Speaker 1: reattach it. Or were they cutting dogs limbs off and
10:58
Speaker 1: then reattaching them, because I'm guessing it was probably the
11:01
Speaker 1: ladder probably. Yeah, I mean we've talked plenty about that
11:06
Speaker 1: kind of topic because I mean, think about it. Why
11:08
Speaker 1: would dogs limbs be pulled off in any more frequency
11:11
Speaker 1: than humans limbs and hence present more cases to practice on.
11:15
Speaker 1: I think they were cutting off dog's limbs and then reattaching,
11:19
Speaker 1: which is messed up. Yeah it is. So you were
11:23
Speaker 1: talking about microsurgery. What I saw was um replacing toes
11:28
Speaker 1: for thumbs. Got big sixties. That was a big one.
11:33
Speaker 1: So you had a a thumb on your foot or
11:35
Speaker 1: a big toe on your hand, big toe on your hand,
11:38
Speaker 1: because apparently fifty to seventy of all the utility in
11:42
Speaker 1: your hand is in your thumb. And if you're missing
11:43
Speaker 1: a thumb, you might as well just not have your hand.
11:46
Speaker 1: You don't need a big toe quite as much. You
11:48
Speaker 1: can use a cane or something like that. Thanks to
11:50
Speaker 1: your new toe thumb and um that that became perfected
11:55
Speaker 1: in the sixties toe thumb. That's a good band name. Yeah,
11:58
Speaker 1: And then in the seven these um free flat tissue
12:02
Speaker 1: transfer became a big thing, which is basically going to
12:06
Speaker 1: a part of your body, harvesting an area of your
12:11
Speaker 1: body like under your thigh, your abdomen um, I think
12:16
Speaker 1: you're back, lower back, and then just basically taking the
12:20
Speaker 1: gap and sewing it back together, right, so you have
12:23
Speaker 1: a scar, but you also have a portion of your
12:26
Speaker 1: body that's diminished in size. Um, and then taking that
12:29
Speaker 1: and using it to basically do what we understand as
12:32
Speaker 1: a skin graft, which which requires microsurgery as well. Um,
12:36
Speaker 1: it's just basically taking this part here and putting it
12:39
Speaker 1: back over here where there's a bunch of damage and
12:41
Speaker 1: reattaching all of the nerves and the blood vessels and everything. Yeah.
12:45
Speaker 1: I saw when I was looking up photos of this
12:48
Speaker 1: kind of thing, I came across something that I had
12:52
Speaker 1: never seen before. And I didn't. I didn't get the story,
12:55
Speaker 1: but you could almost. I mean I sort of gathered
12:57
Speaker 1: what was going on just from the photo series. But
13:00
Speaker 1: up someone was degloved on the on their fingers basically
13:05
Speaker 1: from like the hand knuckles forward. All the fingers had
13:10
Speaker 1: no skin, and they from the looks of it, they
13:14
Speaker 1: inserted it into an arm, like into a bicep, the
13:19
Speaker 1: fingers and like they lived there for a while, like
13:23
Speaker 1: inserted under the skin of the arm, and that that
13:28
Speaker 1: skin they later would remove the fingers and it came
13:32
Speaker 1: off as like a big flat skin graph like sticking
13:35
Speaker 1: your hand in an envelope, and uh, eventually formed like
13:39
Speaker 1: webbed fingers and then fingers. That is crazy, But like,
13:44
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I just saw these photos. I
13:46
Speaker 1: should have done. I mean, it doesn't really have anything
13:48
Speaker 1: to do with this, but it was just remarkable they
13:50
Speaker 1: see someone with their fingers stuck in their bicep under
13:55
Speaker 1: the skin. Like, I'm having trouble visualizing this. I need
13:58
Speaker 1: to see these photos. Yeah, I'll dick him up the
14:00
Speaker 1: show to you. Yeah, if you want to see some
14:03
Speaker 1: really gross stuff, you can just google. Um. Microsurgery or
14:06
Speaker 1: replantation is another one man it's just nasty stuff out,
14:11
Speaker 1: but amazing like that they can. And I looked at
14:13
Speaker 1: so many of them. I kind of got to that
14:14
Speaker 1: point where I was like, well, this isn't gross. This
14:16
Speaker 1: is what the body looks like without skin sometimes, and
14:20
Speaker 1: which is gross. Nuts. I wouldn't grossed out bodies without
14:24
Speaker 1: skin or gross. I don't think so. I think. I
14:27
Speaker 1: think it's the beauty inside. You couldn't desensitize my friend. Well,
14:31
Speaker 1: before we get any further, Chuck, let's do a message break,
14:34
Speaker 1: because I got some good stuff coming up. So, Chuck,
14:53
Speaker 1: we understand microsurgery. Now it's frankensteiny in right, Yeah, you're
14:57
Speaker 1: basically just sewing stuff together. Yeah, because I mean, like,
15:00
Speaker 1: let's say you have a dead person who has a
15:02
Speaker 1: great hand and you have a live person who's got
15:04
Speaker 1: a poor hand. You cut off the live person's hand,
15:06
Speaker 1: cut off the dead person's hand, and attached the live
15:09
Speaker 1: or the dead person's hand and a live person. That's
15:13
Speaker 1: that's Frankensteinian. That's what they're doing. And it's pretty cool cool. Um,
15:18
Speaker 1: but if this ever happens to you, if if say
15:20
Speaker 1: you have a poor hand and that it's no longer
15:23
Speaker 1: attached to your wrist. Yeah, that hand sucks, right and
15:27
Speaker 1: it's all crushed and damaged or whatever. No, no, no,
15:30
Speaker 1: let's say it's intact. And you say, you know what,
15:33
Speaker 1: I think through my shock that I might be a
15:36
Speaker 1: good candidate for replantation of my hand. What do you do? Well,
15:41
Speaker 1: you want to call nine one one immediately, because that's
15:44
Speaker 1: just the first thing you do. You get, go ahead
15:46
Speaker 1: and get folks on the way, or you can ask
15:49
Speaker 1: someone with you to call nine one. That's not putting
15:51
Speaker 1: anyone out. Yeah that's true. If you can't dial, maybe
15:54
Speaker 1: you don't have hands, right, you can tell Sirie to
15:56
Speaker 1: call nine one one. Job. Yeah, I actually changed my
16:00
Speaker 1: series to a dude, so it's not a hurt anymore
16:02
Speaker 1: to an englishman. Actually, yeah, it's kind of fun Reginald.
16:06
Speaker 1: I don't know what his name is actually, but he'll
16:08
Speaker 1: say stuff like, you know, I'll say call Josh and
16:11
Speaker 1: he'll say ringing Josh, oh yeah, instead of calling Yeah,
16:14
Speaker 1: it's classy, kind of fun. Anyway, Um, you want to
16:18
Speaker 1: dial nine one one, get them on the way, and
16:20
Speaker 1: then immediately you want to just try and stabilize the patient.
16:23
Speaker 1: You want to stop the bleeding, either with heavy pressure
16:26
Speaker 1: or a tourniquet above the wound like a sixties female. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
16:32
Speaker 1: And once you get the patient um stabilize and they're
16:35
Speaker 1: not going to bleed out there in the kitchen or
16:37
Speaker 1: wherever it is. Um. You want to get the digit
16:40
Speaker 1: or the hand or the limb and put it on ice,
16:44
Speaker 1: but not directly on ice. Put it in a bag
16:47
Speaker 1: and then put that bag on ice. Yeah, you want
16:49
Speaker 1: to pack pack it in ice as much ice as
16:52
Speaker 1: you can find, but you want to make sure that
16:53
Speaker 1: in the bag that you put the the hand or
16:56
Speaker 1: the digit or whatever in there's no ice and there's
16:58
Speaker 1: no water because wall or causes it to shrivel, and
17:02
Speaker 1: that means you won't be able to reattach it. Yeah,
17:04
Speaker 1: and ice you can actually if I put if I
17:06
Speaker 1: cut off my finger and I threw it in a
17:08
Speaker 1: bucket of ice, it could actually get frostbite. Yeah. That's crazy.
17:12
Speaker 1: That is crazy, but it's also pretty cool. Yeah. And
17:14
Speaker 1: you don't want frostbite on your because you know you
17:17
Speaker 1: won't be able to use it anymore. Now. Frostbite is
17:19
Speaker 1: just um dead tissue brought about by exposure to extreme cold.
17:25
Speaker 1: That's right. So after the teacher right there. It is.
17:29
Speaker 1: After you've got it on the ice, in the bag
17:31
Speaker 1: on the ice, you've called mine one one, you've got
17:33
Speaker 1: the bleeding stopped. You want to cross whatever fingers you
17:37
Speaker 1: have remaining and hope that you've got a good hospital
17:39
Speaker 1: nearby with some surgeons that aren't doing much at the
17:43
Speaker 1: moment or who are willing to cancel their schedules and
17:47
Speaker 1: say let's go do this. Yeah, get off the golf course.
17:50
Speaker 1: So when you get to the hospital, there's some things
17:52
Speaker 1: you can expect. If all of your surgeons have coming
17:55
Speaker 1: from the golf course, they should be ready and waiting
17:57
Speaker 1: for you. And Um, like we said, for they're going
18:00
Speaker 1: to reattach the bone to provide stability um for the
18:04
Speaker 1: rest of the surgery. And there's probably still going to
18:07
Speaker 1: be a little bit of a gap there because they
18:09
Speaker 1: need to get in there. Um. And then they start
18:12
Speaker 1: reattaching your your blood vessels, and just like with Eddie Knowles, um,
18:20
Speaker 1: that just gets you know, the blood flow going and
18:22
Speaker 1: essentially makes that limb alive once more, right well, and
18:27
Speaker 1: it also keeps it from further dying. Um. Because Chuck,
18:31
Speaker 1: it turns out that like there is a finite amount
18:33
Speaker 1: of time which is understandable, but we we are aware
18:37
Speaker 1: of how much time a limb can just sit around
18:39
Speaker 1: in the hot sun starting to go you know, fit it. Yeah,
18:44
Speaker 1: and there's so for example, Um, if you have a
18:48
Speaker 1: whole arm or a whole leg cut off, remember death Proof. Yeah,
18:53
Speaker 1: that girl has her legs like sticking out of the
18:55
Speaker 1: window and mad Mike is that his name Kurt Russell?
18:59
Speaker 1: When he some and her legs goes. Um. If she
19:03
Speaker 1: had survived and her leg just laid there out at
19:07
Speaker 1: room temperature, um, it could have been good for six
19:10
Speaker 1: to twelve hours. I imagine you're really pushing it at
19:14
Speaker 1: twelve hours. But if say you have somebody who's like
19:18
Speaker 1: this leg needs to be put on ice and does
19:20
Speaker 1: everything right, it could stay refrigerated for four days and
19:23
Speaker 1: still be reattached. Yeah. Um. They point out though in
19:27
Speaker 1: this article, ideally you're having that surgery that day. Yeah,
19:31
Speaker 1: but if you within hours, within minutes, they're talking ideally Basically,
19:36
Speaker 1: the sooner the better. As soon as they're ready to go,
19:38
Speaker 1: you should be ready to go as well. But you're right, Um,
19:41
Speaker 1: if that is not the case and you have uh,
19:44
Speaker 1: some good refrigeration going on, you can last for about
19:47
Speaker 1: four days. Yeah, and apparently it's not even necessarily the
19:49
Speaker 1: skin tissue that um that leads to problems and reattachment
19:55
Speaker 1: after being exposed or room temperature. It's muscle degradation. Oh yeah,
19:59
Speaker 1: interest thing. Uh. So you you get there, you're getting
20:03
Speaker 1: your surgery done. Um, you probably are going to expect
20:07
Speaker 1: to go through that first long surgery bone reattachment, blood vessel,
20:11
Speaker 1: maybe some muscle fiber and sure, and then they'll say
20:15
Speaker 1: we'll put the nerves off for later. Um. And then
20:19
Speaker 1: later on down the road will be a skin graft
20:21
Speaker 1: of some kind, like a UM free flap surgery like
20:25
Speaker 1: I was talking about. And the free uh refers to
20:30
Speaker 1: the the free like this part of this tissue from
20:33
Speaker 1: your body has been removed the donor site. Oh, it's
20:36
Speaker 1: not the cost of the surgery, it's it's been cut free. Right,
20:41
Speaker 1: And then you have that makes sense and then UM,
20:45
Speaker 1: it really is simpler than you think. It's reattaching and
20:49
Speaker 1: hopefully everything takes and you fight the infection off and
20:52
Speaker 1: you start the rehab process, which, UM, it takes a
20:56
Speaker 1: long time, and it's it's grueling and not fun. It
21:00
Speaker 1: can be weird at first. Uh. They point out the
21:03
Speaker 1: article and be weird to look down and see your
21:05
Speaker 1: army attached. But I imagine no weirder than looking down
21:08
Speaker 1: and seeing your arm not attached. You know, it would
21:11
Speaker 1: probably be a comfort to see it reattached. But you're
21:14
Speaker 1: a jerk if you're like, oh, it's kind of crooked. Yeah,
21:17
Speaker 1: but apparently sometimes it can feel a little different, and
21:21
Speaker 1: uh that can be a little strange and off putting.
21:25
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, I'm just like I was before, right,
21:28
Speaker 1: you know, better than ever? Um and Tom wrote this
21:31
Speaker 1: one my good friend time chief, he said. He also
21:35
Speaker 1: talked about something called cross transfer. This was mind blowing,
21:39
Speaker 1: which is basically like if if just re plantation is Frankensteinian,
21:44
Speaker 1: this is even more so. Yeah, I didn't quite get
21:48
Speaker 1: the purpose of the hand. Uh, Basically, you're getting a
21:53
Speaker 1: a left hand on your right arm. Let's say, Uh,
21:56
Speaker 1: so your thumb and your pinky would be in weird places, right,
21:59
Speaker 1: your palms still facing the right direction, but thumb is switched. Yeah. Yeah,
22:03
Speaker 1: but what's what's the point of that if you have
22:06
Speaker 1: a bad hand and a good hand. I don't know
22:08
Speaker 1: if that's they only had like a left hand available
22:10
Speaker 1: at the time. I don't know that one. I got
22:13
Speaker 1: the other one where basically they take your lower leg
22:18
Speaker 1: beneath your knee. So like, if your upper leg is
22:21
Speaker 1: damaged and your lower leg is fine, let's just say
22:23
Speaker 1: your upper leg is wasted for whatever reason, but your
22:25
Speaker 1: lower leg is fine. They'll cut it off, the lower
22:29
Speaker 1: leg and basically turn it around right, and then your
22:33
Speaker 1: knee becomes locked. Your calf muscles then serve the function
22:38
Speaker 1: that your thigh muscles used to, and your knee joint
22:41
Speaker 1: is now in your ankle. Then you also are going
22:43
Speaker 1: to be wearing a prosthetic obviously because you have no
22:46
Speaker 1: thime muscles um and you're turned around foot which is
22:51
Speaker 1: now backwards. Is extra support for that prosthetic foot or leg,
22:55
Speaker 1: your limb. It's pretty cool. It's basically saying, like, how
22:59
Speaker 1: can we take this and use it to even better
23:02
Speaker 1: utility now that its original purpose has been destroyed? Yeah,
23:05
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Yeah. I tried to find photos of
23:07
Speaker 1: a cross transferred hand, but I couldn't find any photos,
23:12
Speaker 1: and weirdly, pictures of Madonna kept popping up. Does she
23:16
Speaker 1: have something I don't know? Dude? Like, I tried all
23:20
Speaker 1: sorts of Google searches. And she images of her kept
23:24
Speaker 1: popping up, So I don't know, maybe she's got two
23:26
Speaker 1: left feet or something. She does not what was said
23:30
Speaker 1: in uh Waiting for Guffman. Uh he literally had two
23:35
Speaker 1: left feet. It was kind of a dumb joke, was it?
23:36
Speaker 1: I thought it was. Yeah, So, Josh, that's one way
23:41
Speaker 1: we talked about microsurgery. But there's perhaps another even better way,
23:45
Speaker 1: which will cover right after this message break. Al Right,
24:03
Speaker 1: so we've discussed how you can have surgery, but there
24:08
Speaker 1: may be an actual way to regrow things. Yeah, this
24:11
Speaker 1: is far, by far the more preferable of the two. Yeah,
24:14
Speaker 1: like fingers, but not like you know, you can't lose
24:18
Speaker 1: a whole finger and regrow. It's got to be above
24:20
Speaker 1: the bone. Like let's say you get the tip of
24:22
Speaker 1: your finger, like your fingernail cut off right and you
24:26
Speaker 1: can't find it. And even better, this just involves like
24:29
Speaker 1: dumping a magic powder on that that wound. So if
24:33
Speaker 1: you if you have your finger cut off below the nail,
24:36
Speaker 1: right below the nail, which happened to a guy in Cincinnati,
24:40
Speaker 1: um in two thousand and five who owned a hobby shop. Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: I used to love those places, man, I go in
24:45
Speaker 1: and be like, I just want all the model airplanes
24:48
Speaker 1: and everything. Yeah, Eddie's Trick Shop in Atlanta was my
24:50
Speaker 1: go to, which I've just discovered still exists. Um, not
24:56
Speaker 1: too far from my house. Is it a magic shop?
24:59
Speaker 1: It's it's like everything. Like they had models and had
25:01
Speaker 1: magic kits, they had you know, whoopee cushions was sort
25:04
Speaker 1: of like a catch all. Yeah. I liked both of those,
25:07
Speaker 1: but I never went to one that was the same. Yeah. Anyway, Um,
25:12
Speaker 1: this guy, this hobby shop owner, as far as we know,
25:15
Speaker 1: he sold no magic items. Um, he was demonstrating why
25:19
Speaker 1: a motor was very dangerous in an RC plane. He
25:21
Speaker 1: did a good job, I guess, and cut his finger off,
25:24
Speaker 1: and uh apparently his brother was had something to do
25:30
Speaker 1: with finger with tissue regeneration and said, yeah, he was
25:33
Speaker 1: in the biz. Yeah. And the guy went to the
25:35
Speaker 1: doctor the hospital, and doctors like, we'll give you a
25:37
Speaker 1: skin graft to just kind of cover this weirdness, but um,
25:41
Speaker 1: you know, you lost your finger t s. And the
25:45
Speaker 1: guy's brother was like, don't give the skin graph just yet.
25:48
Speaker 1: Come over. I'll give you a beer, and UM, I'm
25:51
Speaker 1: gonna put some I'm gonna put some something that's called
25:54
Speaker 1: extracellular matrix on your wound, and let's see what happens.
25:59
Speaker 1: And they did, Yeah, and magic happened. Then it regrew.
26:03
Speaker 1: The guy not only regrew his finger, he regrew apparently
26:08
Speaker 1: not the bone, but very surprisingly the nail bed and fingernail,
26:13
Speaker 1: which apparently, like you don't grow a nail bed back,
26:16
Speaker 1: Like even if you cut off just the tip of
26:17
Speaker 1: your finger, like that, nail beds never growing back. This
26:20
Speaker 1: guy's nail bed grow back. That's awesome. Yeah. Extra cellular
26:24
Speaker 1: matrix is awesome. Um. That's basically like the glue that
26:29
Speaker 1: holds ourselves together. And um, not just us, plants and
26:33
Speaker 1: animals and trees and they all have it uh in it. Uh,
26:38
Speaker 1: it's functions outside the body cells. That's why it's called
26:40
Speaker 1: extra cellular obviously. And it's collagen. We talked a lot
26:44
Speaker 1: about collagen, the protein that's um, you know, super good
26:48
Speaker 1: for all kinds of things, especially growing skin. Yeah, like
26:52
Speaker 1: you know it's in skin cream and stuff like that. Sure. Um,
26:56
Speaker 1: so typically what they use is uh, this was a
26:59
Speaker 1: powder from pig bladder. But um, I've seen I saw
27:04
Speaker 1: a video on the New York Time site that showed
27:06
Speaker 1: how they do it today. And this is mainly for um. Like, Uh,
27:10
Speaker 1: let's say you got you didn't want a skin graft
27:14
Speaker 1: for some reason, or it wasn't possible to get a
27:16
Speaker 1: skin graft and you you've lost all the skin on
27:18
Speaker 1: your thigh. They would get a pig bladder and they
27:22
Speaker 1: they spread it out and they remove all the cells basically, yeah,
27:27
Speaker 1: because this stuff doesn't have pig cells. No, don't harvested
27:31
Speaker 1: from a pig body. Yeah, but they still remove the
27:34
Speaker 1: cells in all the DNA with like a chemical bath,
27:36
Speaker 1: and basically what's remaining is the matrix in it. They
27:39
Speaker 1: end up drying it out and it looks like and
27:41
Speaker 1: cut it into sheets and it looks like a sheet
27:43
Speaker 1: of like parchment paper and then they will put that
27:46
Speaker 1: on your leg and it immediately just starts going to work. Yeah.
27:50
Speaker 1: They used to think that extracellular matrix was just something
27:53
Speaker 1: that provided structure for cells to grow around like a
27:56
Speaker 1: fetal in the fetus. Yeah, because if you're if you're
28:00
Speaker 1: in the fetus and like something happens, you lose a toe.
28:04
Speaker 1: If you are a fetus, if you're in the fetal
28:06
Speaker 1: position in the womb and you lose a toe, that
28:10
Speaker 1: toes growing back. Yeah, you know, you grow a vestigial
28:13
Speaker 1: tail that goes away. Your feet and hands start out
28:17
Speaker 1: being webbed, so you're growing a lot of stuff and
28:19
Speaker 1: then getting rid of it. But you can also regrows
28:22
Speaker 1: stuff that you're not supposed to lose up to the
28:25
Speaker 1: age of about two, and then I think the general
28:28
Speaker 1: ideas that the extra show matrix just kind of goes
28:32
Speaker 1: dormant in humans, right, But they thought that it was
28:36
Speaker 1: just structure, and then they realize that no, this is
28:39
Speaker 1: actually creating some sort of signal to the rest of
28:43
Speaker 1: the body to say, hey, don't scar regrow instead, And
28:48
Speaker 1: it goes and recruits stem cells and says, come over here,
28:50
Speaker 1: and let's rebuild this finger. This hobby shop accident was
28:54
Speaker 1: too ironic. Let's reward this man with a regrown finger,
28:59
Speaker 1: and don't forget the nail bed. That's what ex cellular
29:02
Speaker 1: matrix says to everything else. Yeah, and it's uh, it's
29:05
Speaker 1: pretty cool. The problem with um why you can't normally
29:08
Speaker 1: just regrow a finger is because when something like that happens,
29:11
Speaker 1: the trauma happens, your body says it recognizes it, and
29:15
Speaker 1: the immune system kicks in and it's gonna swell up
29:19
Speaker 1: and get inflamed, and scar tissue is gonna start to form,
29:23
Speaker 1: and extra cellular matrix prevents the inflammation, prevents scar tissue
29:27
Speaker 1: from forming and basically tells the body like, no, I'm
29:30
Speaker 1: just gonna grow like normally, right, not scar tissue, just
29:34
Speaker 1: regular old cells. But like you said, after a certain age,
29:37
Speaker 1: it just goes away, Like we have the extra cellular
29:40
Speaker 1: matrix still, but it's function or its ability to trigger
29:45
Speaker 1: regrowth is just becomes dormant or something happens to it.
29:50
Speaker 1: And with this pick bladder stuff, um, they're they're starting
29:55
Speaker 1: to wonder, is there a way that we can just
29:57
Speaker 1: trigger this naturally in the body. And if that's the case,
30:01
Speaker 1: then say hello to regrowing a whole head. I mean
30:05
Speaker 1: you never know, because they pointed out that like deer
30:08
Speaker 1: can regrow antlers and um, things like that, and they're
30:12
Speaker 1: so different than us cellularly, right because it has bone, cartilage, yeah, skin, sure, Um,
30:19
Speaker 1: all those things are in your hand, your arm, your leg,
30:23
Speaker 1: and you would need to regrow all those two for
30:26
Speaker 1: something to really be considered regrown. You can't just regrow
30:31
Speaker 1: the leg but not the bone. It'd still be impressive,
30:33
Speaker 1: but you're like it's kind of flopping there. Have you
30:36
Speaker 1: ever seen the picture of that UFC fighter who's like
30:39
Speaker 1: kicking the guy and he breaks his own leg and
30:42
Speaker 1: it's just like almost like a cartoon or mcgahey. Oh yeah,
30:47
Speaker 1: well it's mcgahey. Yeah. Yeah, that's stuff. UM triggers the
30:51
Speaker 1: old mirror neurons big time. Makes me weak. Uh So
30:56
Speaker 1: that's basically I mean, they've they've been experimenting with war
31:00
Speaker 1: veterans Iraqi war veterans. Uh. And actually the New York
31:04
Speaker 1: Times video, I saw that it was a war veteran
31:06
Speaker 1: who was having this done to his thigh. Yeah right,
31:10
Speaker 1: I think it was skin and tendons and yeah, and
31:15
Speaker 1: it was you know, it looked an early but it
31:17
Speaker 1: was functioning and that counts. You got anything else? No,
31:22
Speaker 1: I think that's it. There's literally nothing else to say
31:24
Speaker 1: about I agree, sir. All right. Uh well, then if
31:29
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about replantation, you can type
31:32
Speaker 1: that word into the search bar how stuff works dot
31:35
Speaker 1: com and it'll bring up a couple of cool things
31:38
Speaker 1: at the very least. Also, UM, type in extracellular matrix,
31:41
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool sounding. Um, and that'll bring up
31:44
Speaker 1: another article too. And uh since I said those things,
31:48
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. That's right, I'm gonna call
31:52
Speaker 1: this correction. You get these from time to time, and
31:56
Speaker 1: we like to read him. Yeah, from time to time.
31:59
Speaker 1: Hey guys, Jerry loved the work you do. I love
32:01
Speaker 1: listening to the show. I wanted to write in though,
32:03
Speaker 1: with a correction regarding Lewis and Clark. I'm working towards
32:07
Speaker 1: my PhD in art history and I am particularly interested
32:11
Speaker 1: in the history of medicine and disease. On the middle
32:14
Speaker 1: of the show, Josh mentioned that the Adventure Party inadvertently
32:16
Speaker 1: discovered syphilis had not been known to Europeans up to
32:19
Speaker 1: that point. This is actually not the quite the case.
32:21
Speaker 1: Syphilis goes back pretty far in European history. It was
32:25
Speaker 1: first documented in the late fifteenth century after a conflict
32:28
Speaker 1: between France and Italy, and remained an issue for europe
32:31
Speaker 1: peaking around the mid nineteenth century. Nineteenth century. Yeah, okay,
32:39
Speaker 1: Josh did have part of it right though, when he
32:41
Speaker 1: said that the party blamed it on Native American groups.
32:44
Speaker 1: Early on, everyone wanted to blame the disease on everyone else.
32:47
Speaker 1: No surprises here. But after that initial conflict, the French
32:50
Speaker 1: referred to syphilis as the Neapolitan sickness, while the Italians
32:55
Speaker 1: named it the French sickness, a trend that continued as
32:59
Speaker 1: the stuff spread. You you if you're interested. It's really
33:04
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff, especially the cures that became popular. Mercury was
33:08
Speaker 1: a really nasty one. History of Syphilis by Claude Catel
33:14
Speaker 1: is a pretty good reference. She read a book called
33:16
Speaker 1: the History of Syphilis. Somebody wrote a book called the
33:19
Speaker 1: History of Syphilis. Anyway, I just wanted and that was
33:22
Speaker 1: Claude q u e accent of Google t e L.
33:28
Speaker 1: So he's French. That is nice. Isn't that what that's called?
33:32
Speaker 1: I don't remember anymore. I don't either. Anybody just wanted
33:34
Speaker 1: to put it out. Car song. Yeah, that is from Katherine.
33:39
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Kathleen Pierce into disease. Thanks very very in
33:44
Speaker 1: paintings about disease. I guess so thanks a lot for
33:47
Speaker 1: letting us know that. Kathleen. I feel like I've been
33:50
Speaker 1: set straight. Uh. If you want to set us straight,
33:53
Speaker 1: we like to be corrected, right, Yeah, and nothing better. Uh.
34:02
Speaker 1: All you have to do is tweet to us to
34:04
Speaker 1: initiate contact. You can tweet to us using our handle
34:07
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. You can go on to Facebook.
34:10
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34:12
Speaker 1: complain there. Uh, we people love doing that. We're at
34:17
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
34:19
Speaker 1: send us an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff
34:22
Speaker 1: Works dot com and although you can't complain, uh, you
34:25
Speaker 1: can enjoy our website Stuff you Shouldn't dot Com. Stuff
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